Nesting by Sisters Hope / Photo: I diana lindhardt

ENTANGLED THOUGHTS AND ROOTED BODIES

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“When we find meaning in art, our thinking is most in tune with nature,” said anthropologist, systems thinker, and writer Gregory Bateson (I don’t know where or when he said it exactly, and even if he didn’t say it, it is beside the point).

YES YES YES!!! I am thrilled about this quote. To me, it is not only finding meaning in art, because that would implicate that all art historians and art lovers have a specific re-wilded, mycelial, blossoming thinking. They don’t. It is more like allowing yourself to get a little lost in the open-ended, non-linear wilderness of reflections or emotions that art can open the gates to. Staying there, with the trouble, and fully enjoying that it’s too grand for you to understand. Much larger and way more complex than what the limited rational brain can get. Meaningful art, like nature, can never be reduced.

My soul unfolds in the shades of the mysterious, the poetic, the beautiful (and I mean that kind of beauty where your heart sings) and the esoteric. I grow from what I cannot grasp. Therefore, the founder and artistic director of Sisters Hope, Gry Worre Hallberg, is the first person in the book, I’m working on. I went to speak with her last month and am currently finishing the chapter.

Sisters Hope Home is an artwork you inhabit for 24 hours. Magic thrives in this sensuous and aesthetic universe, and you don’t want to leave it. Time stands still as all clocks are absent, and the pace is slow, the mood is curious, the touch is tender. Silence, or lack of speech, prevails.

While you inhabit Home, you’ll encounter your inherent Poetic Self through a guided meditation. Mine is The Soul Doula, Gry’s The Sister. When you leave, you’ll discover how horrifyingly fast and loud our society is.

Gry and I spoke softly in her office.

Sisters Hope Home Air by Sisters Hope / Photo: I diana lindhardt

Inhabitants of Sisters Hope Home donate their notebooks from their stay. When Gry did her Ph.D. in artistic research, The Sensuous Society, she read 800 notebooks as empirical data. What did people actually experience during their stay? She was surprised of the clarity of the picture. People feel connected: Connected to themselves, to other human beings, and to the larger whole, nature, and cosmos. To all three ecologies, Felix Guattari wrote a book about (the mental ecology, the social ecology, and the environmental ecology). The sensuous, poetic, and aesthetic create ecological awareness and connectedness. AND your heart opens. It is a direct way to a sustainable future.

So, “When you find meaning in art, your thinking is most in tune with nature.” Or, as one of my favorite folks, eco philosopher David Abram, says: “Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem.” Lovely, don't you think?

To write this book where Sisters Hope fills up the first chapter, I need to unlearn something. I must shed my old academic identity. Have you ever had to shed a skin? Oh, how I have held on to mine and cherished it like a prize, I once won! Academia entails too many confining dogmas for my language and thinking now, and as a skin, it is way too tight.

I guess, I now, without this coat, will feel everything a little more.

Tender hugs,

Birgitte

"A crescent moon sits in the cool night sky. We know this moon like our shadows, like our dreams; it is our mind's eye. We share a glance and watch it sleep as it hangs over our dreams." From Tarot. Notes from the Pagan Otherworlds and the card is from Pagan Otherworlds Tarot. Both designed beautifully by Uusi.

I AM NUTS ABOUT OUR LUNAR FRIEND

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Shëkufe Tadayoni Heiberg has written a truly beautiful and important book, Nødder (Nuts). It makes me look at the moon in a different way. There’re so many aspects of this book that I look forward to hearing Shëkufe unfold.

We will meet at Brøg Litteraturbar on Wednesday 7th at 5 pm for a conversation on Nødder. It would be lovely to see you there, too!

If you're a new subscriber and wonder who I am, I have introduced myself here.

(still some of that old skin left in that text, I can tell)

Photo: Lisa Bregneager